Jemma Stops Running
by KESwriter
Summary: Clara and the Doctor arrive on a barren planet and decide to explore. Jemma runs into them and thinks she's hallucinating.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note:

I own nothing.

Clara and the Doctor arrive on a barren planet and decide to explore. Jemma runs into them and thinks she's hallucinating.

To me this story had to be written in honor of the character and her love of Doctor Who.

By the way I have never written for Thirteen so I hope get him slightly right.

When Jemma Stopped Running

The goal was to visit a foreign _populated_ planet. One with cities, parks, and eateries. The Doctor had a place in mind called Alex but that is not the planet they landed on. Instead when Clara opened the TARDIS doors she found herself looking out on to a dark barren wasteland.

"Where are we doctor?" Clara said with a touch of annoyance. She was used to this iteration getting things right.

However the Doctor looked mildly excited by the error. "Some place we don't belong," he said and noticed the large planet in the sky. "We're in a parallel universe."

"How can you tell?" she asked curiously.

He put on his sunglasses. "There's a slight variance in the molecular structure of this dimension. Something only a Timelord could see."

Clara rolled her eyes. He liked showing off.

"So what do we do now?" she asked. "Do we leave because we don't belong or do we explore?"

"Don't be ridiculous, we explore!" he said.

They wandered around a bit. Frankly Clara was wishing they had visited Alex but she couldn't help be intrigued by sense of danger lurking in every dark shadow.

"Can you tell if this planet still has inhabitants?"

The doctor touched his glasses. "Not likely. If it does there are only desperate predators wandering around."

She realized she wasn't wearing the right shoes for this particular excursion. "Then maybe we should leave before we become their last meal?"

"Not yet! Things still lived here at one point maybe there's some archaeology to be done here. See what lived here."

She sighed and followed suit. They walked some more and found some markings next to a cave entrance that read, according to the TARDIS "death."

"Please tell me you don't want to go in there," she said.

He nodded his head into the entrance with his sunglasses on. "Nah, whatever caused death in there hasn't been in there for years. We're chasing shadows now."

"Don't you mean ghosts?"

"No, shadows here have a distinct element of terror here from centuries of hunting. They can't harm you but you could go mad if you stayed here."

"Then let's go before we go mad," Clara said quickly.

The Doctor sighed and turned around slowly as a young woman crashed into him.

"Sorry," she croaked as if she hadn't used her voice recently.

The Doctor slowly got to his feet while the woman took longer. When she turned around she gasped.

"You're not real!" she tried to shout. "I am officially losing my mind you're not real."

"Ah, that explains the dimensional difference," the Doctor said. "She thinks we're telly characters."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2:

" _Telly_ , Doctor?" Clara asked.

"We're television characters in her world," he explained as the woman was gasping for air.

Clara had a million more questions about how much of her life was a television show but noticed the girl needed help. She approached the woman who looked about her age. She was covered dirt and her clothes were ragged. She looked like she had been running for a long time.

"Hello there," she said calmly and approached. "I'm Clara Oswald and this is the Doctor."

This had the opposite effect to what Clara was expecting. She pulled out a sharp rock. "Don't come any closer. You can't be real. You're monsters taken from the subconscious of my fantasies. Come any closer and I'll try my luck in beating you."

The Doctor wasn't wrong about the idea of going mad if one stayed here long enough.

While Clara was confused the Doctor looked curious.

"You sound vaguely scientific," he said.

She turned her sharp rock to him. "Of course I'm 'scientific!'" she cried. "I got my PHD in Biochemistry when I was seventeen! I specialized in both human and alien biology when I was working at the top SHIELD laboratory in the world!"

"So how did you get here?" he asked.

"An obelisk engulfed me!" she said.

"Fascinating," he said and touched his sunglasses. "By my calculations and judging from the markings, you're likely to be stuck her for another fifty years."

The woman was barely hearing him. She dropped the rock. "Okay this is a hallucination." She dropped to her knees and fell on her side. "I'll just lay here. Listening to my favorite show like I did as a child. I liked you in a cape and smoking jacket. I wanted to be Liz Shaw."

"Or I could take you home," the Doctor said.

Clara stepped forward looking astonished and excited

"Can we do that without causing harm to the universe or something?"

"We'll just be careful about where we drop her off," the Doctor approached her. "Come on. Up on your feet. We'll get you as close to home as we can without causing a paradox."

He offered her a hand. "What's your name?"

Jemma moaned as she stood up. "Jemma, Jemma Simmons. And I don't want to go home to Shefield. I want to go to SHIELD headquarters."

Clara stepped forward to help Jemma and the Doctor. "How different is there world from ours?"

"More, boring," he said. "Alien races aren't constantly trying to invade them and the aliens look more humanoid."

Jemma began to lean on Clara with a dead look in her eyes. "I might be walking to my death."

"Or the TARDIS," the Doctor said and snapped his fingers. "Wake up Jemma. You're a scientist on an alien planet. Can't you imagine that through this obelisk you weren't just transported from another place, but another reality?"

"Anything is possible," she said listlessly.

"Of course anything is possible when you say it like that," the Doctor said impatiently. "Think like a quantum scientist. Is it possible that Clara and I are real?"

Jemma looked at him carefully for the first time. "It really is you isn't it?" she said happily.

"I'm going to travel with the Doctor and his companion Clara Oswald!"

She burst into tears and hugged the Doctor.

The Doctor looked a mixture of uncomfortable and annoyed.

"Some help please, Clara."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3:

"It is beautiful!"

Jemma said as she rushed through the doors and gazed around followed by the Clara and the Doctor.

"That's, different," the Doctor muttered.

"I take it all your previous companions have said 'it's bigger on the inside?'" Clara said.

"Most look around to check the dimensions," the Doctor said as Jemma used the railings to move around.

"I have been to the Doctor Who Experience twice and this is so much better," she cried and collapsed into a chair.

"So how do we get her home?" Clara asked.

The Doctor pulled off a panel that revealed the membrane console they used when they were hunting for ghosts in the past and the future. He then went to the near-hyperventilating Jemma and plucked a hair from her head.

"Ow," she said and slowly got to her feet to see what he was doing.

He placed one long dirty strand into the membrane of the TARDIS.

"Your DNA will guide us to your home world, but we'll have to drop you off someplace alien. Stonehenge is as good a place any."

"I knew the place was alien," Clara said. "How else do you explain the design?"

"In my world it is a possible portal to the different realms of the universe. I did a term paper on astrophysics about the site," Jemma said.

"Yes, your view of the world is so basic. You really don't know the depth of your world yet. They've only had one alien invasion and that was only in New York."

"How do you know so much about that world Doctor?" Clara asked.

"I have my own channel for that world. The TARDIS doesn't let me tune in often but I know enough."

Jemma stood up a little straighter.

"Does that mean I'm a telly character in your world?"

"We're all characters in different dimensions" the Doctor said evasively. "In one I think I am a Communication Director who only knows how to swear. In another I share the face of a man who escaped the fires of Pompeii."

"Do you know character I am in another dimension?" Clara asked.

"Try not think about it too much, it will give you humans a headache."

Neither Clara nor Jemma spoke. Clara was curious but knew better than to push her luck otherwise he'd shut up completely. Jemma was simply too tired to speak. She found another seat and fell back.

Clara noted her condition. "Let's get her home."

The Doctor touched the membranes carefully. "Yes. I feel the TARDIS isn't starting to like her paradoxical presence here."

The TARDIS made sounds that had filled Jemma's fantasies. She was really traveling in the TARDIS.

…

In less than two minutes they arrived near the center of Stonehenge with a slight jolt. The TARDIS was apparently eager to be rid of Jemma Simmons. It was around midnight and stars could be seen from angle. Clara had visited the Stonehenge as a student and with her family but they never got this close. It was truly stunning.

They guided Jemma out and into the center. The Doctor told her to lay down and he knelt over her.

"You seem like a remarkable woman Jemma but I have to erase this from your memory. You'll wake up with no recollection as to how you got here."

"Understood sir."

Jemma looked up at the stars, happy to recognize all the constellations and distant planets. Tears dripped down her faces silently.

"Thank you," she said.

The Doctor pressed two fingers to her forehead and she fell asleep. Clara was touched by the sweetness of the scene.

"Come on Clara," he said brusquely. "We'd best be going before the TARDIS tries to leave without us."

"Can you show me an 'episode' about us?" she asked as they entered the TARDIS

"Let's go find some monsters instead."

…

Jemma Simmons was found early in the morning by maintenance men. Jemma woke up at first disoriented and didn't know how she got there. At the visitor's center she called to get a ride home.

Scientifically, Jemma knew she needed to go into a containment cell to wash off in the event some of the dirt from the planet she was on was toxic when it reacted to other earthy compounds. Every inch of her needed to be scanned in the event that she underwent some sort of transformation without knowing it. She knew she also needed to physically recover from the experience with bedrest.

But none of these rational thoughts stopped her from running into Fitz's arms when he got off the new jet. Fitz swore he would never let go of her again. She wasn't running anymore. There was no other place she wanted to be at that moment. Even if she had something as incredible as a TARDIS.


End file.
